


now i am surely becoming an incurable romantic

by mrsilikemyself



Series: camp camp stuff [2]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Coming Out, Coming of Age, Gen, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 23:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20348806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsilikemyself/pseuds/mrsilikemyself
Summary: Neil, as he has done all his life, wishes he had never gone to camp.





	now i am surely becoming an incurable romantic

**Author's Note:**

> ive been fucking around for Ages with this stuff it was originally going to b a bday gift for my best friend mikey but like. i feel so bad i said that years ago... anyways i finally decided that if i didnt post it now i would never post it. might finish this might not who knows ! but now its out there
> 
> i dont even watch camp camp anymore...
> 
> title is a sylvia plath quote all mistakes my own rt shld ask if they want to do smth with this yada yada u know how it goes

“My mom bought me nail polish again,” says Nikki when the Skype call connects. “It’s orange, and I think I like it.”

She’s glaring at her nails as if they had personally affronted her. Miles away, Neil looks mildly sick.

“A girl in my class complimented it?” Nikki continues. “She was like, ‘Hey, that’s like, so sick.’ And I don’t know, I liked that-”

“I kissed a boy,” blurts out Neil, then, interrupting Nikki.

Nikki blinks and looks up, looking grainy and carefully blank. She lowers her hands slowly.

“Okay." She pauses before asking, “Was there tongue?”

“What? Why is that your first question?” 

Nikki rolls her eyes and her image lags for a few seconds.

“Dude. Do you think I care about your gay freakout, for real? I’m here for the deets.”

Neil closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and hangs up on her.

Nikki takes seven seconds to call him again. When he accepts, she looks sheepish.

“I’m sorry…” she pouts. “Tell me about your gay freakout, I promise I will listen for like, twenty-five minutes at the very least.”

Neil sighs and rolls his eyes.

“...There was tongue," he relents.

“Nice,” grins Nikki, proudly. “Okay, put me in situation, what are we talking about here? Where were you? Was it a party? The deets, Neil.”

“It was at a party, after a mathletics championship.” He ignores Nikki’s snorted but fond nerd. “We won and then the whole team went for pizza, and after to this guy’s, Hector’s house. We stopped on our way to buy vodka, even though none of us ever drinks, and forgot to get a mixer.”

Neil is winding up, already, he can feel it in the way his words slither out, nearly a sneer. Nevertheless, he continues, because if he doesn’t let it out now he will probably explode. Dying in a freak accident (and one caused by emotions, on top of that) is fourth in Neil’s list of ways he doesn’t want his life to go, tied with kicked to death by a goat. 

“So everyone was drunk not even twenty minutes in,” he continues, disgusted “And Hector is. He’s fucking hot.”

He spats the last word and pauses, looks down at his hands. It’s been half a year since Max said he liked boy’s hands (and that he liked boys, as in, in general) and Neil is mature enough to admit it changed his entire world view. Hector has great hands, with long fingers and short nails, even if they are cold because of poor circulation. He had run them through Neil’s hair, his neck, and they had made Neil shiver.

“Neil,” whispers Nikki, glee clear in her voice. “Neil, did you jump this guy? Did you straight up jump this guy?”

Neil feels blood run to his cheeks and, more indignantly, his ears. He turns red like a rose blooming, then a tomato ripening, then a beet doing. Whatever beets do.

“And what was I supposed to do?” he hisses “I was drunk and, apparently, also gay.”

Nikki laughs, no, cackles. She cackles until she can no longer breathe and there are tears in her eyes and then she takes a big gushing mouthful of air and continues to giggle, undeterred.

“Are you nearly done?” Neil asks, scathingly.

“No!” She exclaims and continues to laugh and laugh until she slumps over her laptop, breathless and smiling. “Oh, Neil,” she sighs “you’re a great friend, I thank you for this joy. Now tell me why you freaked out, please.”

Neil thinks that no, he will not tell her why he freaked out. She doesn’t deserve it, that’s clear to see in her laughter and her impish smile and her big earnest eyes. He opens his mouth to say so and instead what tumbles out is:

“Hector looks like Max,” Nikki says nothing for a moment so he shoulders on. “I’ve never seen him without a hoodie, and his eyes aren’t green but they are piercing, and he, he complimented my hands. He hit on me first, and he did it by saying he liked my hands. I have horrible hands.”

It’s true, Neil bites his nails and leaves his cuticles bloody and disgusting, and they are too big for the rest of his body, with chubby, stocky fingers. He’s a lefty, too, and has, with the years, ended up with a permanent blue ink stain on the side of his palm. And there’s the whole thing were if he isn’t paying attention his fingers curve and arch and his shoulders come up to his ears and with them come his arms and he looks like a praying mantis.

“Oh, Neil,” sighs Nikki again, but it’s sad now. “That is so pathetic.”

And what’s Neil supposed to do? He hangs up on her again.

\-- 

He realizes after that she never asked him if he had liked it. He had, very much, and admitting it to himself makes him feel light. 

\-- 

The next Monday, hangover forgotten, hickeys fading (there had been hickeys, Neil nearly screamed out loud when he realized), Neil goes to school, scurries past Tabii with practised ease and gets to his locker only to find Hector leaning against it looking half asleep and, well, really cute. 

“Hey," he says straightening when he sees Neil approach.

“Good morning,” says Neil with a wobbly smile and they shuffle around each other so Neil can get his locker open. “Did you, huh...“ He clears his throat. “Did you want something?

“Yeah, yes, I-I was wondering if maybe later we could go out? For coffee or something?” Hector asks and Neil doesn’t need to look at him to know he looks hopeful, that he’s probably playing with his hoodie zipper like he’s seen him do when he’s nervous. Maybe he’s even blushing a bit. “As a, you know? A date,” he adds softer, more hesitant when Neil doesn’t answer.

The thing is Neil seems to be a stupid drunk gay but he’s still most definitely an intelligent sober gay, so he knows Hector and Max are different people. Hector forgets his pencil case more times than he brings it to class and Neil always has to lend him a pen. He has white straight teeth and two dogs, Threepio and Arturito. His accent comes out when he talks to his parents but not to his sisters. Looking back on it, Neil had spent the four years he’s known him staring at his mouth and he’s definitely the kind of guy he wouldn’t mind introducing to his parents. But Neil hasn’t been all weekend sick from freaking out about liking him because, if he’s frank with himself, he doesn’t.

He closes his locker and turns to Hector.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it hurts coming out of his throat because it’s such a stupid, hard, necessary decision, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Oh,” says Hector.

Neil hesitates but continues.

“I like someone else? So it was. Really horrible of me to kiss you, uh, you’re just, you know?” he flaps his hands around the general space his face occupies. “Handsome.”

Neil wants to die and Hector looks like he’s experiencing the same thing.

“Right. That’s… Right. Thank you?” Hector says and they stare at each other in the eye for a moment, until Hector seems to steel himself “I will, see you around, then, I guess.”

He turns on his feet and walks away, looking crestfallen and fuck, he has really nice shoulders. Neil slams his head against his locker and groans.

\---

Neil doesn’t drop out from mathletics because he’s clearly the best they have but after the awkwardest McDonald’s drive-through in history (sitting with Hector pressed against his side, still incredibly handsome, in some shitty car full of nerds) he puts that group chat on silence. 

And it’s all fucking camp Camp’s fault for hiring David. David!

\--

Neil plays D&D because Neil isn’t afraid to recognise he’s a fucking nerd. Every Wednesday he gets on a group Google Hangouts call and becomes Udorax Warkiros, dragonborn paladin of Erathis, goddess of civilization, inventions and law. It’s fun and, contrary to popular knowledge at his high school, Neil likes having fun. Nikki and Max laugh at him, but Nikki is the goliath ranger of their party (Tar O’Cement, can and will eat everything she finds) and Max, well.

Neil’s phone beeps with a text.

“facetime me after ur dumb game” Max has written.

Max calls him every Wednesday and lets Neil gush about what has happened that game. It’s his favourite part of Wednesdays.

Neil sighs. He should talk to Max. 

“What’s up, nerds?” shrieks Nikki once the call finally connects. 

They are all already used to her bullshit, Neil and Nerris and Tiana, who is mostly Nerris’s friend and has a bi pride flag hanged up in her room over her bed. Neil’s eyes jump to it the second her smiling face appears in its little rectangle and he can feel his heart speed up. Nerris is saying something about goblins, though, so he breathes in and out, deeply, and concentrates on listening.

\--- 

After, he doesn’t FaceTime Max. No one said he had to be brave about this.

\---

Neil spends two weeks of every four with his mother, as well as half of all non-denominational holidays. Of the three of them, Carl is the only one that still practices but when Neil is with her, his mother still makes time to go to temple. It’s very awkward because they always find Carl’s parents there, who, seven years later, still don’t know what to do with their ex-daughter-in-law. There are lots of stilted head nods and questions about Carl that go nowhere because none of them really talk to Carl anymore. Afterwards, Neil’s mother always needs a cigarette so they walk home no matter the weather as she sucks on her death stick. Today it is raining, a soft but constant pitter-patter against their umbrellas, and Neil’s condensed breath is not that different from his mother’s smoke exhales. They walk side by side down the sidewalk and Neil thinks of how to tell her he’s gay, like her ex-husband who broke her heart.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she asks as they stop to wait for the traffic light to turn green.

Neil blinks and looks up at her. She’s staring right ahead, half-obscured by her umbrella and her smoke. 

It’s been barely a couple of weeks since the party, since Hector asked him out, he hasn’t even told his best friend and he’s worrying about coming out to his mother.

“Just thinking about my homework,” Neil says, and they don’t talk again until they get home.

\---

The thing is, Max is such a piece of shit. He’s angry and scrappy like an alley cat, and he may be dark and handsome but he’s so fucking short. Neil has always prefered taller girls in those times where he’s let himself crush on someone like an idiot. Tall, elegant girls with sharp eyebrows, a penchant for cynicism and a thirst for knowledge. The only thing Max seems to have a thirst for lately is gin (the cynicism goes undisputed). The relationships he’s had have been fleeting hookups in bars he shouldn’t have been allowed in and half-drunk make-outs at home parties. He has a reticence towards monogamy, back acne and finds it physically impossible to apologize. In his bad days, he once confessed to Neil, he just couldn’t believe in true intentions, that people weren’t always facetious. He had ended his confession with a bitter laugh and had said, “now, that’s an SAT word, huh?”

And yet, well. He has nice hands, and a nice smile, and a nice laugh. Neil and he make each other laugh so much. And he’s really smart and brave when he wants to. No matter how much he says he hates everything and everyone he won’t hesitate to save kittens from trees or help old ladies cross the street, not out of any inherent kindness, but because that’s just a thing you do, Neil, you help grandmas when they ask, that’s how the world is. Once, he lent Neil his hoodie because he half complained that the AC at his house was too high. Max is a good friend, he will bitch all through helping you, but he will do it no matter what. 

Neil is crushing hard.

\---

So, Neil is a youth, right? A millennial, a Gen Z or X or whatever they are calling them this week. Maybe W, for Weeb.

One night, Neil can’t sleep. He turns and turns in bed and finally gives up and grabs his laptop. The few minutes until it turns on feel like the longest of his life. He clicks on his browser and then stares blankly at the search bar. He puts his fingers on the keyboard and, one finger at a time, writes “am i gay”. He presses enter but the first result is a goddamn Buzzfeed quiz and he goes back to searching. He tries “i am gay” but that just gives him a vine. He watches it three times, because it is pretty funny, and then goes back to Google. He starts writing “i'm gay for my best friend” but doesn’t finish it before erasing and putting “i'm in love with my best friend.” Neither feels really true or like he’s even ready to ask himself that, least of all put it out there online. He hesitates, his finger on the enter key, before erasing and writing “pornhub gay threesome”. If there’s something to be said about this whole gay, bi, whatever, thing is that the porn options now are even more endless.

\--

“Uh, hey, Neil?” says Carl the next morning from the other side of Neil’s closed door in his apartment. Neil is in bed laying on his stomach doing homework on his laptop. His headphones are blaring music but he has sensitive ears so they are actually not that loud and he can still hear Carl over them.

“Yes?” he says, exasperated.

“Can I come in?” asks Carl, hesitant. “I just have a question.”

“What is it?” Neil rolls his eyes. There’s no way he’s getting up to open the door, he’s finally comfortable in bed.

Carl sighs, softly, and there’s a little thump when he lets his head rest on the door.

“Have you, uh, well,” Carl starts and then stops. “Did you know our Google searches link up?”

Suddenly, there’s a cold sweat going down Neil’s back.

“No, I didn’t...” he says with a little voice after a too-long silence.

“Yeah, I didn’t either,” sighs Carl again, very low and tired. “If you ever need to talk, son, I-”

“It’s okay!” interrupts Neil and then, because he feels bad, somehow, “Thank you.”

Neil stays very still until he can hear Carl retreating down the hallway and even then, it takes him a while for his heart to calm down. 

\--

It’s not that Neil and Max aren’t talking, it’s just that they aren’t talking much.

Max took stoically (brick-wall-like, really) to Neil begging off of their weekly post-DnD time. “k” reads his last message, after Neil’s pathetic excuses. And now it’s been two weeks and they aren’t texting. They tried FaceTiming the next week but it was weird and awkward and Max had hung up barely fifteen minutes in, with the flimsiest of pretexts. Neil doesn’t even remember what it was. They still talk, really, it’s just that it’s mostly through Nikki.

“Max told me he went to this bikers’ bar last night,” says Nikki. “And he got carnitas and then got drunk on tequila behind a gas station and puked on the Uber guy he called to get him home. It was fucking disgusting, that car’s gonna smell like bad meat forever now!”

“That’s nice, Nikki,” sighs Neil from behind his maths homework. He hopes he doesn’t sound jealous, he’s not deluded enough to not know how shitty that would be since he’s the one that made it awkward and then didn’t even try to fix it. It’s like with Carl, but he’s not thinking about Carl. He even left Carl’s apartment early to go to his mother’s and getting her to come to get him without saying why sure was a mess, that’s how much he’s not thinking about Carl.

Nikki sighs back dramatically from the screen of his laptop and he looks up at her with pleading eyes. ‘Please, don’t say we should talk’, he thinks at her. There’s a whole minute of direct eye contact before Nikki breaks.

“Fine! I’m dropping this! ” she says. “But you know what you did! Let’s talk about how now you’re coming to my aunt and I’s mountain retreat this spring break.”

Neil sighs again but doesn’t complain. It’s fair enough. And, really, it can’t be worse than camp.

\--

Neil just. He just wants to come out. He’s never really wanted to yell anything from a rooftop before, he’s always been more in the playing it close to his chest with his emotions club, but there’s something about this… It grates at him, how fundamental it feels, how basic, how personality building. Of course he’s gay, of course he likes men as well and when he sees people looking at him there’s a part that knows they’ve written him off as heterosexual and it’s. It’s just not the truth. Neil is a scientist at heart and he cares very much for the truth.

Still, he doesn’t say much of it to anyone. Self-preservation, or maybe just plain old cowardice. Or both, it all comes together to make Neil who he is, and who he is is in the closet, apparently. 

\--

“Right, uh, can I just say something? Before we leave?” Neil asks after DnD one day.

“Sure!” says Tiana and Nerris makes an encouraging noise as they pack up their dice. 

“Is this about that?” asks Nikki, wiggling her eyebrows. 

“About what?” asks Neil.

“About that, you know?” she says. 

“What are you even saying, Nikki, that doesn’t make any-” but before he can get worked up he stops and takes a breathe in. “I just wanted to, uh, to come out...”

There’s silence for a moment.

“Like, did you lie to us or something?” asks Tiana confused.

“Or, like, do you want to, uh, meet up and play IRL?” continues Nerris

“Yeah, I’m confused now, too,” says Nikki. “Do you mean this in a Mr Brightside way? Is that what we are doing, are you singing now?”

“What? No! In the gay way, I meant it in the gay way,” explodes Neil. “What the fuck, two-thirds of you identify as gay?”

“Oh, so it was about that,” thrills Nikki and fuck it. Neil hangs up on them.

\--

Later, Tiana PM’s him on discord.

“hey,” she says. “welcome to the club of the dnd gays or days”

Neil rolls his eyes, but he smiles, too. His friends are not so bad, he thinks.

\--

Nikki’s aunt is this butch that seems to only wear overalls and owns a lot of dogs, like. She has like seven. Neil follows her on Instagram because she’s a nature photographer that owns seven dogs. Also she has this cabin in the woods, a half an hour trek to the closest neighbour (a whole hour to find the one that won’t shot you on the spot, yeehaw, America!), and her and Nikki go out there every other month, to survive out of nature and commune with the trees. She is, for obvious reasons, Nikki’s favourite aunt. 

“Neil, right?” she says with a very strong handshake when he comes to get him for spring break. “Victoria. Call me Vicky.”

Neil is kinda regretting this but he puts his bag in the back of her car, between two dog cages with sleeping giant beasts. From inside, he can hear Nikki in the process of changing her voicemail.

“Terribly sorry, I can’t pick up because I’m being mauled to death by wolves somewhere without signal, hopefully,” she’s saying but he waves at him distractedly.

Neil rolls his eyes and looks at his phone. No messages from Max.

“Hey, Neil.” Neil turns and finds Carl staring with badly repressed worry at him. “You be careful, alright?”

Neil rolls his eyes, but he nods.

“Can’t be worse than camp,” he says, his very own personal peep talk, perfect for all occasions. 

“And, well,” Carl sighs, and his eyes stray for a moment to where Vicky is looking after her dogs while ribbing Nikki. “If you ever need to talk to anyone, to an adult-”

“Is this,” starts Neil loudly, and then realizes what he’s talking about and lowers his voice. “Is this about the Google searches?”

“It’s not only about that, your mother and I- well, more I than your mother. But we’ve talked and, we feel as if…” His voice fails him.

“As if I don’t talk to you?” says Neil. “Maybe it’s because I don’t want to. Maybe it’s because I have nothing to tell you, because I don’t feel comfortable talking to you. Have you thought of that?”

Carl is silent for a moment, and then, desolate and very small, he says, “I have.”

Neil can’t look him in the eyes, after that, and he takes out his phone again. He goes to his messages and stares at his conversation with Max.

“Listen, Neil,” continues Carl. “I know the divorce was hard for you, and it definitely didn’t create the best of, of spaces for you to openly talk about whatever worries you, or confuses you, but your mother and I, we just want you to be happy. I don’t want you to talk to me if you don’t want to but I just, I hope you are talking to someone.” Carl hesitates. “I wish I had talked to someone before, well, you know. There is nothing I regret more.”

Neil sighs. 

“I know,” he says and carefully writes, i miss you, to Max. He sends it before he can really think about it.

\-- 

The drive is stupid long and extremely loud. Vicky yells along to Queen and Courtney Barnett, and her dogs yell with her and Nikki falls asleep on his shoulders fifteen minutes in so he can’t even move to cover up his ears. Neil’s nerves are not fried, they are deep fried. If they have to go over one more plot hole Neil is going to lose it. It doesn’t help his internal turmoil. He’s feeling guilty, over Max and over Carl and even over Nikki, for having to put up with him, and he can’t stop looking at his phone even if he had turned it off as soon as he sent the message. He keeps going back to his dad saying “I have.”, to his last awkward Skype call with Max, to last year’s eve. He’s such a coward, he thinks as he miserably waits for the hours to pass.

\--

In the end, Neil falls asleep too. A fake shutter sound wakes him up, and he blinks with his heart on his throat at Vicky who has her phone out.

“This one’s gonna get me at least 6.5k likes, for sure,” she smiles, sharp, when she notices Neil looking.

Neil tells himself to calm down. He was dreaming, he thinks, though he only remembers an oppressing weight on his chest. Must have been Nikki, who is still sleeping, somehow mostly on top of him even with the safety belt on.

“Where are we?” he asks because they are not in movement right now and it feels like an impossibility after how long the car ride had felt. Outside, there’s no trees or nature, just a busy city street he vaguely remembers even as he struggles to wake up.

“Just have to get your other friend,” Vicky says, like that makes any sense at all. 

“What?” he asks and then his door opens and Max is there, throwing a duffel bag over him.

“Scuttle over, Neil,” he sneers.

Neil does as he’s told, though he's panicking.

“What!” he asks again, mostly because the yelling makes him feel better.

“Can’t ignore me in the middle of fucking nowhere,” says Max, very angry and very smug.

“I hope this is still my nightmare,” says Neil, who knows perfectly it isn’t. “Please, let it still be my nightmare, I’m a good Jewish boy, I don’t deserve this.”

Vicky snorts and gets the car moving again. Nikki, still asleep, snores by his ear. Max laughs darkly.

“Buckle up,” he says. “This is gonna be just like camp!”

Neil, as he’s done most of his life, wishes he had never gone to camp.


End file.
